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Ok, everyone out there...please go right now and replace all your CF lightbulbs with energy-burning incandescents. Go shoot your Hybrid car, and fill up your trucks and SUVs and drive around town until you empty 3 tanks of gas.

I'm FREEZING! Time to warm up this planet! It is freaking JULY, people, and I'm in a sweater and my fingers are like ice cubes. WTFBBQ!?!?!?!

First lesson: never post to your LJ that work is going to be good and ahead of schedule. Cuz Friday? SUCKED. Found out that the vendor's little install script only runs on Linux and Sun Solaris...and our IT Services group only support HP/UX. Heh. I lit up quite a few phone lines to bitch about THAT little stunt. Anyway, we'll find out Monday whether or not this means a 6 week or a 1 year delay in my project. *sigh*

Second lesson: when the cookbook says to use a candy thermometer - don't try to use a digital meat thermometer, even if it has a "candy" setting.
Trying to make fondant at home for the first time in my life yesterday. Each attempted used 3 cups of sugar. I tried 3 times before I finally got it right...and thank God DH was helping because otherwise I would've thrown the third attempt down the drain too...but he rescued it. The method that worked was:
Put the marble slab in the freezer.
Boil 1 cup of water.
Take it off the heat, stir in the sugar til its "mostly" dissolved.
Put it back on the heat and bring to a boil at mid-heat (setting 6 on my stove).
Sprinkle on 1/4 tsp of Cream of Tartar, stir it up really quickly, slap in the candy thermometer and turn the heat down to about 4.
Let it boil for about 5-10 minutes, slowly turning up the heat to 7.
Take the marble slab out of the freezer and put the metal cookie tray on top of it on the counter. This makes the tray nice and cool.
When the thermometer reads 235, start dropping bits of the liquid into cold water. When it stays in a malleable clump in the water, then its at "soft ball candy" stage, then pour it onto the cookie sheet (face UP, not inverted as the recipe book says).
Wait until the liquid turns almost solid (you can push a dent into it with your finger).
Use a STIFF spatula (not a floppy rubber one) to mix for a long dang time...more than 10 minutes, I think. Eventually it will turn into crumbly sugar that is white.
Then knead with the confectioners sugar until it becomes a smooshy lump that you can pick up in a solid ball.
So, I THINK I have fondant in my fridge now. :)
Unfortunately, this killed 3 hours of my day yesterday, so not much else got done.

So, as you may remember, I'm now running a project for my company that is very important, highly visible. I spent most of the past month spinning my wheels and getting nothing done.

Finally today, I had the chance to get ahead of schedule. I worked with a vendor rep to install most of our Training environment server software. It took all day, especially with the hurdles we had to overcome to install bits on the Unix database server that usually we don't have any access to. Fortunately, there is a process for getting a user account, a home directory, and the Reflections-X software we needed. Fortunately, I was able to get the normal turn-around time reduced to under an hour. Its good to "know who to call" sometimes.

All this means that I should be able to deliver on 2 milestones at least a week ahead of schedule. This is good, because my Validation team is making my life very difficult by being a week behind in releasing documents for review and approval. *sigh* I wish I could just say "make this happen by this date" without having the crack the whip every day to make sure people are on task.

I also interviewed a potential new team member today who sounds very skilled and talented, but would.not.stop.talking! Sheesh...Interview tip: Know When To Shut Up. He'll probably get the job anyway, but I hope his verbal landslide was only a nervous habit today.

I hope tomorrow goes as well as today, because if it does, I'll be in very good shape going into next week.

So in the last few weeks, I've been very busy and very bad about updating my journal! I've made several status updates on Facebook, but I realize now that if I look at those in 6 months, I won't have a fricken clue what they mean today.

So, I need to get some details down before I forget! This might be a bit random, based on my stream of consiousness.

First, my vegetable/fruit gardens: About 2 weeks ago, the strawberries started to be ready to pick. We went out every day to pick whatever was ripe at the time, and I ended up with enough to make 12 jars of jam, and get another huge bowl of fresh berries to eat. Unfortunately, we also had about a third of the berries grow rotten, which according to my research means we have a fungal infection in the mulch under them. This is something we have to treat now and probably forever. Plans are: keep cutting off infected stems as we find them, pull up a few plants to allow more air-flow between them, provide support for the plants so the berries don't sit on the ground, and get an anti-fungal spray from Gardens Alive! next spring.

The veggies are growing well, too, even in spite of the huge hail storm that swept through 2 days ago and ripped the leaves up on every plant we have. One broccoli was toppled, so we'll be eating that one tonight. All the other plants look like they will recover. We've been harvesting radishes for about a week now, and they're yummy! The tomatos and sugar snap peas have flowers on them. The bush beans are falling over...notes for next year: almost everything we planted this year need some kind of support. Also, don't plant oregano behind broccoli. :) It is in the shadow and not growing as well as it could.

NJ's ballet classes are done for the year, but her recital is still coming up this weekend. Friday night is dress rehersal, and Saturday afternoon is the presentation. Also going on this weekend - Landsknecht, our SCA camping event at the Homestead. So, I've got to drive up to Lehighton, set up camp, drive down to the dress rehersal, and back up to Lehighton Friday night. Then Saturday at lunch time, head BACK to the recital (in Souderton), not returning back to the event until dinner time. Then pack up and come home Sunday morning! And poor DH is going to miss all this, keeping SA and Cleo with him at the event so they don't disrupt the recital. Oh yeah, I also need to organize the raffle going on at the recital. HA HA HA! Will I EVER learn to say NO?

My first book club meeting was REALLY fun. I love our club! We have such a diverse membership of great people! I can't wait for the next meeting. :)
The best part of the night was when my wonderful sis-in-law gave me her Princess House Vintage Garden tea set...pot, cups, saucers, cream/sugar containers and serving caddy. She is TEH AWESOME! :D Now I can't wait to have my next tea party :D

Speaking of which...I will be serving tea to our guests over the July long weekend. We're having a weekend-long party with close friends and their children...so it should be a fun-filled chaotic weekend, and I'm really excited about it! But it means that coming home from the event this weekend cannot result in our usual "dump all the camping crap in the house until the next event". Nope, we'll actually have to CLEAN IT UP this time. Can't have our guests think we're complete slobs!

I can't remember what else I wanted to discuss, so I guess I'll wrap this up now and come back later for more updates.

Don't ask why, but I served "afternoon tea" today to/with my SIL. It was so fun! She made the sandwiches (smoked salmon/dill/cream cheese and cucumber/butter), and I spent the last 467 hours of my life making petit fours for the first time ever.

First I made the "Lady Cake" ...never again. It was weird to assemble, and required too many mixing bowls and blenders. But it was a rich, lightly lemony cake, that I then baked in a 3/4" deep cookie tray (my cheater jelly roll pan).

This morning I sliced the cake into thirds then split each piece in half for stuffing. Then I made "true Buttercream" filling...which I've never made before. It involved making "simple syrup" (water, sugar, and cream of tartar), boiling that...pouring it into egg yolks to cook them while blending them...then blending 24 tablespoons of butter into this mixture, one tablespoon at a time. It took nearly half an hour, but MAN was it yummy. Then I spread that in the middle of the cake, put it between two cookie trays to compress it, and refrigerated for about 4 hours.

I wanted to make fondant for the top, but after I looked up the recipe, I realized I needed to start that last Thursday. :\ Instead I decided to do a chocolate glaze...again, which I've never made before. So I bought 6oz of bittersweet baking chocolate...got home and realized I needed 8oz, so I tried to make up the difference with cocoa and oil. This resulted in "moon sand" chocolate...NOT a glaze. *sigh* So, a quick run to the store, spend $5, get more bakers chocolate, this time made a better glaze...though it was a tad too thick in the end.

I cut the cake into shapes...this was an adventure too since the cake was sticky and wouldn't come out of the cookie cutters cleanly. Then I spread warmed strawberry jam on the cake/buttercream shapes, cooled it til the jam solidified again, then spread the chocolate glaze over top and let them harden.

In the end...YUMMMY! But OH SO much work! Luckily, I only used up 1/3 of the cake/buttercream layers, so I can do this again with much LESS work involved. :) Combos I'd like to try:

- thin layer of buttercream over the cake, and vanilla fondant over top
- orange marmalade over the cake, and chocolate glaze, thinner this time, over top

Guests coming to 4th of July picnic, beware - you might be asked to try these out :)

I don't post here much any more, but I do read a lot. I was reading today my sister-in-law's blog posts entitled "Things about fat people you never knew". It inspired me to write this:

All of that, I knew. :)

Now, some of you who don't know me IRL may not know that I am a small lady. I've been under-weight my entire life. I can't gain weight. Breastfeeding my daughters made it even worse...I think at this point, my weight is literally what bones, skin, muscles and blood weigh in a 5'5" human, because I have nothing else in me...though I'm trying.

And I am amazed at how many things on my SIL's list apply to skinny people as well. Not that this is an "all about me" thing...I love her post and I'm trying to spread the word about it, but I think that everyone could do with a bit of tolerance-expanding knowledge.

For example:
1) Skinny people don't pull out skinny people to see what we "should" look like either. Its nice to know that we could spend thousands of dollars on a warddrobe to look like a magazine picture - but guess what? Nobody who isn't a pop star can actually live in those clothes. They aren't comfortable, they don't fit well, and you certainly cannot play with Play-Do in them!

2) We don't subsist on water and salads. Most skinny people are cursed with an "overactive motabilism" that means that no matter what we eat, we don't gain weight. I have tried to subsist on Big Macs and ice cream, and guess what? I was unhealthy AND underweight. Don't be jealous here - unhealthy eating is unhealthy eating, no matter what your weight is.

3) We don't spend 12 hours a day "in the gym" - but we probably should. Everyone who is underweight is at risk for weakened bones, and actually needs to exercise more than average and over- weight people. The muscles we have don't need to work hard to support our frames, and so we end up with more fragile bodies.

4) We don't want to wear belly-exposing 14-year old's clothing, but we often have to. Stores carry sizes 6-12 on average. What happens if you wear a size 4? You have to go to the 2 specialty shops in existance that cater to small people, and spend $100 just for a pair of pants that don't sag off your hips, or $50 on a shirt that fits across the shoulders but actually leaves room for breasts (most 14-year old's clothing assumes a flat chest).

5) We aren't sluts just because we're skinny. We don't want to be hit on by everyone just because of our looks. We aren't trying to take away the attention of men from other women...we're just trying to live our lives, too.

6) We have feelings, too. And assuming that we think fat people are disgusting or need to exercise or must be like us, is offensive and rude. We don't live our lives believing our body is the perfect type, its not. We don't go around proud that everyone wants to be "like us" - in fact, we want to shout at you DON'T DO IT!! You shouldn't want to be what you aren't - be proud to be your size, as long as you're _healthy_. Don't binge-diet, don't hate yourself, don't take MY body and hold it against me. Don't assume that I won't be hurt if you say "you're skinny, you don't understand", cuz I will.

So the whole point of both these posts? Don't make assumptions about someone's personality because of their body weight. :)

1) That you can completely ruin chicken on the BBQ in less than 1 minute.
2) That burning green beans smell EXACTLY like someone's smoking pot in the house.
3) That putting on food to cook and then playing outside with your chidren (bubbles, soccer, baseball, and tag) leads to an unplanned trip to McDonald's for dinner.

4) That butter instead of shortening makes my already fabulous banana bread EVEN BETTER! I didn't think it was possible, but YUM! NOM NOM NOM.

5) That adding fruit to pancakes is not popular with the under 30 crowd in this house...but for the over 30 crowd? More NOM NOM NOM. :D

Also this weekend:
I planted bush and pole beans, cucumbers, cantelopes, and more carrots and radishes.
We weeded the iris and most of the other beds.
NJ learned how to cast a fishing line in the backyard. SA learned to count to four. We all got lots of sun and fresh air, so

HOORAY FOR SPRING! :)

So I went out in the wet jungle-like grass to inspect my garden this morning. We've had nothing but rain for 3 months...er, days...and I wanted to see how over-grown the weeds had become.

I was very excited to see 4 neat rows of seedlings in the "Radishes" square. Hooray!!

Last week sometime - I now forget the exact day - I took the opportunity of being at home to get my eldest DD out there, and we planted 16 carrots and 16 radishes in 2 square foot sections. Last weekend, I also purchased (yes, I know - there was a mixup and the free ones I was supposed to get didn't materialize) two tomato plants. One was free from our local florist, and its called "Dan's Favorite", so who the heck knows what that will taste like. It is a regular old red, big, tomato style. The other is a sweet grape tomato which NJ loves. I also started four more sugar snap peas. Out of the first four, only two have started to grow. The other two are either very late, or aren't gonna make it at all. *shrug* Oh well.

The broccoli are doing great, there are four oregano and two parsley that have been out there for a while and are thriving, and one basil plant that looks a bit pale, but seems to be ok.

This weekend will be spent mostly weeding. I think the plan is to start another batch of carrots and radishes in about a week and a half. Then I also get to start the beans, cucumber and cantelopes. After that, no new plants will be added - it'll just be maintenance until harvest time!

So far, my experiment is going well. It hasn't really taken too much time to care for this garden, and the fruits (rather, vegetables) of my labour are well worth the investment of that time. Hopefully the weeding necessary to keep this bed growing won't make me change my mind. :)

So, here I am another year older. Yay me! I had come to post something profound, but got completely distracted by my friends list...especially Rustymarble's drunk post from last night...too freakin funny!

So instead, you get my rambling. Thanks so much to my in-laws for yummy cake and Jo-ann's gift cards after dinner tonight! You guys rawk. :) Thanks to my hubby for putting up with my pizza craving tonight, and for his much appreciated, though half-asleep mumbled, birthday wishes at 7:13am. Thanks to my daughters for cuddles and hugs and home-made cards. :D Now I understand why my own mother loved my craptastic attempts at art. And thanks to my mother for waking me up at 7:12am to sing me "Happy Birthday" - it made me smile AND got me to work on time. (*oops*) Thanks to my sis for the card and the birthday wishes, too. Last, but not least, thanks to my bestest friend for the lunch-time call to wish me a happy day.

I'm so lucky to have a wonderful family and set of friends who care about me.

Thanks, everyone. I love you all!

...if'n you wanna be, that is.

If you have a few minutes, please check this out:

http://www.emmauspl.org/newsite/index.html

Report back any broken links, bad formatting, spelling/grammar errors, etc, please? Also, kudos or compliments would not be unappreciated. :D

Danke!

the scariest thing I've heard in a long time:

""Very exciting, very exciting for the American people, because now we can get things done without explaining process," Pelosi told CNN's Candy Crowley."

I guess we, the American People, don't need explanations of what our leaders are doing...just accept it without question.

This past weekend was Spring War Camp in Owlsherst, and it was a fabulous trip! We shared a cabin with baronadhemar, catelinelb, and of course our bestest friend, fritzi. I've never done an SCA event in a cabin before, so it was very disorganized trying to figure out what to pack and what to leave home. As it turned out, we forgot lots of stuff we could've used, but luckily sharing with "established" camping buddies, everyone had something to fill in the gaps.

Friday, we dropped off all the girls (human and canine) at ootwoods's parents farm, where they got plenty of fresh air and exercise playing with the residents there all weekend. We arrived on-site around 6:30pm, got our bed set up, parked the car, and enjoyed a delicious dinner of scallops with bacon and some kind of sauce. I'll just say, I thoroughly enjoy Baron Adhemar's cooking, and I feel sorry for anyone who doesn't get to share. :) Cateline also arrived sometime right before dinner, but I lost track of time sometime that evening.

Saturday morning, Fritzi and I climbed out of bed early and introduced Cateline to the extra-fun hobby of Geocaching! Found 5 local caches, found a Dunkin Donuts (more importantly), and brought back coffee for the sleepy-heads. Later that morning, Fritzi's wife and boys arrived, and we had a relaxed day of sewing, talking, exploring the event merchants (where I acquired a new chain for my Landsknecht lady outfits, some white silk thread - thanks Cateline!! - and some pink and black bargain trim for the girl's garb).

The highlight of my weekend, though, had to be getting to fire one of the cannons! :D Man oh man is that ever a rush! I'm trying to get pictures of it, but right now don't have them. I think I'm going to try to be on the cannon line at Pennsic this year. :) I've always loved the "big boom sticks", but getting to actually be less than a foot from the "pfffffft - BOOM!" was even better. :D

Saturday night was staying up WAY too late, catching up with my best friend in one of those rambling conversations that touches nearly every topic possible. Its been a while since we did that, and it was definitely spirit and soul-refreshing. I've been in a great mood ever since. :D

Sunday was a quick pack-up and we were offsite by 10:30. We picked up the girls and got home by 1pm, where I still had time to do laundry, clean up the house a bit, and get a good dinner...these are all very odd things for us to do on a day we return from an event. :D All in all, it was a very very good weekend! Thanks to all the awesome people who made it so.

A lot of paint.
A lot of money.

I cannot believe how much we got done this weekend.

- Planted the pole beans, and at least 15 dahlias in various places about the yard
- mowed and weedwacked (bought a new weed whacker today, hubby loves it)
- received a quote for the fence that we might be able to afford. Yay!
- helped NJ practice on her bike
- took girls to the park, twice
- cleaned out almost all the flower beds of thistles and dandelions
- cleaned about 8 loads of laundry - most hung to dry on the line outside
- grocery shopping, hardware store hopping (had to visit 3 to find all the little bits of stuff we needed), lunch out with my girls in the midst of all that
- slept in
- grilled out
- got lots of sun, fresh air, and quality family time...

--- all in all, a great weekend. :D

Just got this in my email, sent this morning:
"K & J :

Submitted to the IT CAR approval committee today – we should have an answer within 5 working days,

J"

The first two are my IT director and VP in that order, the last one is the CIO. (CAR = Capital Appropriations Request...ie: money to use on my ELN project).

**happy Snoopy dance icon required**

So, I got the "job" at the library. I'll be meeting with the director this afternoon at 2 to discuss "possibilities". Nothing fancy, my friend! Just whatever free HTML template I can find that I like, a few pictures (which I'm asking DH to take today while we're there), and basically the links that are there now. Plus a new calendar. (Thanks to Google, I can embed an actual calendar in the website, without working with HTML tables).

We've also been getting quotes for installing a fence in our backyard. I'm not really sure we can actually afford it. First quote came in at about double what I'd like to spend. Still waiting on the second, and the third consultant is coming today also. With taking a few days to make a decision and then booking it, we're probably looking at June for an installation by now anyway.

Yesterday we managed to spend some time out in the yard, despite the lack of fence, with the dog and kids. Got the grass mowed, mostly...looks like this year we'll need yet another new weed-whacker...does anyone have one that has actually lasted more than 6 months?? Every one we buy dies in no time. Very frustrating. Anyway...I checked the veggie garden: Broccoli is still alive, nothing else is sprouting yet except a few microscopic weeds. *sigh*

I decided I definitely need more early-spring flowers in my garden. I'm so desperate for some COLOUR! We had a couple of brief days of crocus, and ONE batch of daffodils are up. Other than that...its all just green. I'm okay with that, at least its not brown. But still, some pink would be nice. :)

The rest of this weekend will be spent getting ready for next weekend's SCA event. We're not camping, but we will be sleeping in an outdoor cabin with no furniture...so we need to pull out a few things. Great part is, we won't have the kids with us (just way too cold for them to sleep outside yet!), so we'll be able to stay up late, or go Geocaching in the morning, or separate and do things we're interested in without "saddling" the other parent with them, or whatever! I'm really looking forward to it, especially with the addition of our bestest friends being there, too. :D

I approached the senior librarian tonight and asked her if there was someone I could talk to about the library's website. We talked. She is as embarrased as I am about it. :) She's going to talk to the library director tonight, but it sounds like I might have a pro bono job to fix it up for them!
Their last "volunteer" webmaster vanished, and the website "crashed", and the director was only able to restore what they have now. That explains a lot. :)

Anyway, hopefully I'll hear something tomorrow. Now to start coming up with design ideas...

How do you think it would be best to go about suggesting to our local public library that their website looks like it was designed by an 8th-grader in 1987?

I'd even offer to fix it, if they allowed me to.

Really. Its horrid. Look for yourself:
http://www.emmauspl.org

Veggie garden is ready for plants!

NJ took this picture for me from the top of her playhouse ramp:

This is how the veggies will likely be planted:

Wish us luck! :D

I don't know why, but I FEEL hungover this morning. I'm not...I had one drink with alcohol in it yesterday, at about 5pm. No way am I hungover from THAT. But, my head aches, my body aches, and I feel like crap.

Anyway, if the weather cooperates, I'll be outside a while today, prepping our veggie garden. I need to turn the soil, rake it flat, and then measure out 1-foot squares. Last weekend I planned out all the veggies we want to grow, when they would need to be planted, how much room they would need - all according to "The Square Foot Garden" technique. If this guy knows what he's talking about, we'll have a lot of fresh-grown veggies this summer, in our tiny little plot (6x7)! If it works well, we might expand it a bit next year to have enough for canning...but that's really getting ambitious.
I sat down and wrote out all the things we need to do each weekend on the family calendar. A lot of items clash with SCA events, birthday parties and other travel plans. I suspect our garden won't do as well as we'd like, unless we (and I mean mostly DH) do a lot of work during the week (weeding, tranplanting, harvesting). Luckily, too, my MIL does a lot of her own gardening, and tends to start more seeds than she needs, so we'll be getting a lot of transplants from her...which saves me a lot of time and work!

I've also been slowly working away at my pile of sewing projects. I found out that many dresses I had made for NJ will fit SA with only slight modifications needed (mostly hems). So YAY! for not needing to do as much. However, the flip side of that means, of course, that NJ needs bascially an entirely new wardrobe to get through Pennsic...that means at least 7 distinct outfits to last 10 days. We found 2 that fit her now. I also wrote down a list of what I wanted to have next Pennsic right after we got home from last Pennsic - smart of me, eh? - and so I've started working on the 5 new chemises and 3 surcoats. My cloak is lined, finally (after 8+ years of wearing it without lining or clasps). I fixed up my rust-brown dress, which is the first dress I ever made. While it has many "not right for medieval re-creation" things about it, I think it is still my favorite item to wear. I get many compliments from it, and its warm, and I can "change it up" with surcoats over top of it. I just need to figure out what kind of headgear would be most appropriate to wear with it.

Anyway, today I want to get a few minor details on these projects taken care of, so they can move upstairs to the attic in the "ready to wear" garb pile. I also need to do laundry, clean up the house in prepapration for the party we're throwing next weekend, and keep my tabs on what's going on at work today (major application upgrade that I've been working towards for 6+ months now).

Guess I should start with another cup of coffee and a shower...